A day for pride

It should be a day to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the community. However, this year’s Brighton Pride Parade, held on August 1st, saw incidents of behaviour that almost led to its cancellation.

On Saturday morning, a package suspected of being a bomb was found tied to a signpost along the parade route. With observations that it had looked similar to the pinhole cameras dotted around the city to capture iconic photographs of the event, police officers had to delay the procession by an hour and a half. However, the show had to go on and Pride managing director Paul Kemp sung the praises of Superintendent Nev Kemp, who facilitated the road closures and re-routing of the parade. The director even went on to say that the bomb scare brought everyone together.

The untoward behaviour did not end there, though. At 4.30am on Sunday morning, amidst the night-time celebrations of Pride, a 30-year-old man of no fixed address suffered life-threatening injuries after a verbal altercation with three men. The attack, which took place in Bartholomew Square at the rear of the Waterfront Hotel in Kings Road, was believed not to be a result of homophobia.

In spite of the aforementioned incidents, this year’s Brighton Pride turned out to be a roaring success where people could attend street parties and celebrate those individuals who had once been so cruelly discriminated against.